


Small Price To Pay

by Acidqueen (syredronning)



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: ASCEM, M/M, Spiced Peaches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-18
Updated: 2010-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-09 00:36:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syredronning/pseuds/Acidqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Sarpeidon, things don't work out all that well…or do they?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Price To Pay

**Author's Note:**

> Spiced Peaches - a "What If" scenario based on "All Our Yesterdays". This is an extended version of my drabble "Secret Sin" in the 15pairings McCoy challenge.
> 
> Special thanks my wonderful beta Cyranothe2nd. All remaining errors are mine!
> 
> Originally posted October 2007.

McCoy had learned to live in Sarpeidon's ice age - with the severe cold, Spock's violent, moody personality and the uneasy truce with Zarabeth. He stayed away from the couple as far as he could, which wasn't easy due to sharing the same cave. But one night, things changed.

"I want a child," Zarabeth whispered as she lay down beside him.

"You want a child from Spock," McCoy corrected her.

"In any way I can conceive one." She straddled him, and he gave in, fully knowing that the Spock of this world might well kill him for it.

*

Her plan seemed to have worked, as she got pregnant not long after the start of their secret liaison. But McCoy hoped to God that it was coincidence and the child was really Spock's, or else...

He gloomily reflected on his own, obviously suicidal behavior. He should never have given in to her suggestion, but he'd been frustrated, tired, lonely and very humanly underfucked. Gonads be damned.

Spock was radiating happiness and pride, and constantly ushering McCoy to see after Zarabeth's health. The doctor obliged, but hoped she'd lose the child. If there had been fitting herbs available, maybe he would have tried to help the process - or maybe not, as it was a life after all, and he wouldn't be able to harm the unborn little worm, even if it cost his own head.

And so he went on living with the dread building deep inside of him.

*

Childbirth was a miracle of nature; childbirth was also often doomed to go wrong, as it did tonight. Zarabeth' health had declined over the last weeks; obviously the child's chemistry didn't react well with her system after all. Once she was in labor, McCoy had tried to get the child out, but it lay in the wrong position and he was forced to try a Cesarean. The whole scenario ended in a terrible showdown of blood and bowls and a dead child in his hands. Spock's last threats of control and logic went completely out the window, which left Spock wiping tears all over his dead lover's breasts.

It took Spock a while to focus on the newborn. He reached out. "Give me the child," he said, his voice barely a whisper.

"It's over, Spock," McCoy said, bone tired. "It's dead too." He placed it on Zarabeth's chest.

Spock reached out to touch it and stroked the small head. It was in that moment, when Spock's fingers glided over the tiny - round - earlobes, that McCoy could see terrible understanding rising in him. Spock looked up to meet McCoy's eyes.

"What have you done?" he asked roughly.

There wasn't a good answer to that question, was there?

Spock was on him in the wink of an eye, throwing him into the nearest stone wall. It knocked the air out of McCoy, but not enough not to feel Spock's hands on his throat next. The Vulcan pushed him against the wall again and again in an absolutely mad rage, and McCoy couldn't blame him for it. Losing his wife and child, finding out about the betrayal like this...someone had to pay for it...

And then everything turned dark.

*

When he regained consciousness, he was lying in his bed, the one Spock had put him in on their very first arrival here. He was hurting all over, and felt puking sick to boot - Must have a concussion, he thought.

Though, remembering what had gone on before he had been knocked out, he was astonished to find himself alive at all. He tried to rise from the furs, but the pain in his rib cage instantly stopped his weak attempt. He sank back with a moan.

Upon his movements, someone else became alive. Steps drew closer, and then the Vulcan's face hovered above his eyes. "Sleep," the thin lips said. A hand descended on McCoy's forehead and he instantly drifted away.

*

The next time McCoy opened his eyes, everything was rather blurry. He was feeling hot and cold all at once, sweating and shivering. It had to be fever, an inflammation caused by some of his injuries. There was someone at his side and, considering he still seemed to be in the icy hell, it had to be Spock.

Or maybe the nightmare had ended by now, and he was back on the Enterprise and it was only his fever that painted the wrong images, substituting the gray of sickbay with the gray of stone walls.

"Nurse Chapel?" he asked throatily. "M'Benga? Are you there?"

"Unfortunately, we have not been rescued, doctor," Spock's voice discarded his hope. A hand enfolded McCoy's, emanating a peace that spread through the doctor's body and made breathing easier. A cool cloth wiped his forehead before fingers settled down on it, inducing an already familiar touch of minds.

*

It took some days before the fever - and the other pain in his body - to vanish. The furs were a terrible mess by then and McCoy stank like a polecat, but Spock didn't seem to mind as he helped him to the small hot water pool in the back of the caves. The Vulcan washed him thoroughly and almost tenderly. McCoy let the agreeable caring run on for a while, then couldn't keep himself from asking any longer.

"Why did you save my life, after everything...?"

The Vulcan's movement didn't pause at all as he replied in what sounded like a well-rehearsed statement. "When you went down to the ground, my rage soon disappeared. And with it came the realization of what the last months must have been like for you. An unbonded pre-Surakian Vulcan was a very dangerous creature, we were taught in school. It is unfortunate that you had to experience the truth in those words first-hand."

"Everyone would have gone berserk under these circumstances," McCoy said. "If not for my...compliance with her wish for a pregnancy, at all costs, she would still be alive."

"And still unsatisfied with the situation at hand," Spock said. "I have learned a long time ago that once a person is determined to reach a certain goal, it is almost impossible to distract him from it. I was not able to fulfill her wish; therefore, she sought you out."

"I should've said no...but I was too - well, lonely. Frustrated." McCoy looked up to meet Spock's eyes. "Maybe also jealous."

"I will not blame you for your emotions, Doctor, when it is obvious that I have been governed by my own emotions as well." Spock walked around him, diligently rubbing his back.

'And what about them now?' McCoy wanted to ask, but didn't know if he'd be able to handle the answer. He was having problems with adjusting his picture of Spock back to 'controlled Vulcan' after having had to endure Spock's emotional roller coaster for months. The tenderness Spock had shown towards him over the last days wasn't enough to make him forget everything else...and he didn't even want to. Something inside of him urged him to stay alert for the next breakout of violence. It would take a while before he would get this out of his system, even if Spock stayed the calm, tender man of the moment.

"I'm getting really tired," McCoy finally said. Spock helped him back to the Vulcan's own bed, where the furs were relatively clean and smelled like...well, Spock. McCoy buried his nose in the brown sea of hair and fell asleep.

*

Spock's mood didn't change over the next weeks; he kept being careful and controlled and helped McCoy until the doctor had to put his foot down on the over-the-top-pampering. They fell into a new, satisfying rhythm of living, with Spock hunting animals and McCoy tending the greens and the cave.

"He got himself another girl, right?" McCoy stated to the closest bush of zeza, a local plant that delivered tiny little, apple-like fruits. He removed some yellow leaves, putting them aside - they could serve as vegetables tonight. "I wonder when he's going to come and join me in bed too."

He was rather sure of Spock's agenda by now, and what must have happened while he'd been knocked out by the fever. There had to have been at least one healing trance, because his health was restored much faster than was to be expected under the circumstances; and he'd only seen Spock's extremely caring side with Zarabeth before. Probably Spock had already established a bond with him, of whatever kind.

McCoy wasn't sure how much free choice was left to him by now, and if he wanted to test it. There was something very relieving about not having to fear for his life again and again. Spock had saved him because he didn't want to be alone; the same motivation that had driven McCoy to have sex with Zarabeth. The same basic, primal need.

Could he imagine sharing Spock's bed, even if it probably meant being on bottom forever? McCoy touched one of the tiny apples, his fingertips taking in its rough surface. The touch made the plant shake a little.

Maybe, yes. Probably. He'd experimented a little in his youth, like most guys did. It wasn't his natural preference, but it wasn't bad either. And being stranded here with Spock - alone now - he could well imagine being with him. It wasn't as if he hadn't been a little attracted, deep inside, in the past, like almost everyone on board. And while it did hurt a little to be only sought out as last resort, at least he could be a great last resort to Spock - and the Vulcan to him.

"Yes," he stated to the bush that had become inanimate again. "I'm saying yes." And hearing no contradictory statement, he went back to their cooking corner and started preparing dinner.

*

The food was sparse tonight, just enough to stop their stomachs from rumbling. Which was a pity, because McCoy could've done with a little energy boost, considering what he was up to do. Once having made up his mind, he was determined not to wait until another pon farr would bite Spock's - and his - ass and leave them with broken pieces of a life again.

They comfortably rested close to the small fire for a while, McCoy's head rested half on his folded arm, half leaned against Spock's thigh. It was a great position to start something, and McCoy took his chance and began stroking Spock's leg with his free hand. Spock didn't react at first, which McCoy considered to be silent agreement. It made him more adventurous, and so his hand was soon up to Spock's groin. There was a small bulge to be felt - not a raging hard-on yet, but definitely more than there should've been.

McCoy's fingers kept rubbing over the by now rather thin and partly torn fabric of the pants, until Spock caught his hand, stilling it.

"What are you doing?" the Vulcan asked.

"The logical thing, Spock," McCoy said. "And you know that."

Spock's fingers tightened their grip on McCoy's - then, in a rushed movement, the Vulcan pulled him up. They ended on their sides, face to face, with McCoy's back to the fire.

There were no words as Spock became active, taking over what McCoy had begun. Just like he assumed, the Vulcan wanted to be the one on top, textbook alpha male that he had proven to be on Sarpeidon. But McCoy didn't complain. Spock might choose the piece of music, but it was still him orchestrating how it was played. They were in tune, and if balance was lost for a moment because Spock did something too quick or too uncontrolled, the Vulcan instantly corrected it. He was the most considerate lover McCoy ever had, of any gender, and that was a lot more than McCoy had hoped for.

Afterwards they moved away from the dying fire and into Spock's bed. McCoy curled in the Vulcan's embrace, satiated and happier than he'd been for months. Maybe it would've been more truthful, emotionally, to hang on to the past and remain as frustrated and hostile as he had been to Spock most of the time, but useless sincerity be damned - he wanted to stay alive and well, as long as he could. And being with Spock like this was a very small price to pay...if any.


End file.
